How much should you spend on Facebook ads?

Recap: Boost Your Business with Facebook Event

Posted July 21, 2016

In Marketing, Non-Profit, Social Media, Website Design

Below is a summary of what I learned about Facebook ads at the recent Boost Your Business with Facebook event in Glen Burnie, MD.

I have to admit I was hesitant to even register for this event let alone show up for it. I was afraid it was going to be such basic material and a waste of time. I was pleasantly surprised by the practical advice and amount of helpful information that was shared. If you have the chance to attend a future event I strongly encourage you to go.

With over 153 million daily users, Facebook is a powerful resource for businesses of all sizes. Here’s a couple of interesting facts that were shared:

QUICK FACTS:

153 million people visit Facebook daily
138 million visit via mobile devices
93 million people visit Instagram every month
80% of people on Facebook are connected to at least one local business
100 million+ hours of video is watched daily on Facebook
On average people check their newsfeed 14 time per day

Some of the most useful information that was shared was insight into Facebook’s ever changing algorithm specifically for pages. By following this schedule you can help improve your chances for a better organic reach.

Facebook suggests that pages with under 1,000 likes should post an average of 3 times per week. For pages with over 1,000 likes you should be posting only once a day.

ADVERTISING:

How much should I spend on ads?

One of the biggest questions most companies have about advertising on Facebook is what should their budget be? Previously I have never found a good resource to help answer this question. Your budget will actually vary based on what you’re trying to accomplish. The question you need to ask yourself is “How much am I willing to pay for a sale?” Multiply that number by how many days you want to run the campaign and that’s your budget. Facebook recommends not running an ad or boosted post for more than 1 month at a time. For small businesses it’s recommended to set a budget of $5/day to increase likes and engagement on posts and page likes. When running a campaign for website clicks you should have a minimum budget of $100/day.

4 Tips for creating ads on Facebook and Instagram:

To improve your chances for engagement with your ads you should follow the following rules:

Limit your ads to 1 sentence. This will help make sure the user sees what you have written and encourage engagement.
When running multiple ads at the same time make sure you’re using separate audiences as Facebook will not deliver multiple ads to the same people. For instance create a custom audience that consists of current customers and then create a separate ad targeting new customers.
Short 30 second videos and photo Carousels are currently the most effective ad sets.
Pick a start and end date. By assigning these dates Facebook knows to push your ad the hardest during those days instead of you just manually ending it.

Review your ads success:

Under your ad manager you can review your Relevance Score to see how well your ad is doing. Relevance score is based off of both positive and negative actions from people your ad is serviced to. If your ad drops below 5 consider pausing it and editing the copy or creative to help improve it’s ratings.

“The best way to increase sales is to decrease funnel clicks.”

Remove unneeded clicks:

Your ad finally gets someones attention and they click on the link and then are taken to your website. That counts as 1 click. What do they have to do next to complete a sale or inquiry? The fewer the clicks the more likely you are to complete a sale.

Closing:

Whether you manage a page with 200,000 likes or are just now considering creating a Facebook page I hope this post can serve as a strong resource to help navigate you on your social media strategy. For more tips and helpful resources make sure you like my page at: Facebook.com/justinwilletdesign.

Are there any other tips that you have found effective and would recommend to other businesses? Comment below with your thoughts.